Boarding-School System Increasingly Unpopular

By Dalia Acosta, IPS, 4 November 1998

HAVANA, Nov 4 (IPS) - Controversy over a system obliging high-school
students in Cuba to go to boarding schools in rural areas
has reached unprecedented levels.

The government has reaffirmed its commitment to the policy but
parents want better conditions in the schools and studies on the
system's repercussions on the family, while the Church wants
people to be able to choose where to educate their children.

"This is not a conjunctural situation," said Education
Minister Luis Ignacio Gomez. The boarding schools "respond to a
pedagogical idea that the country arrived at by consensus," Gomez
told 'Granma', organ of the Communist Party.

Gomez said every country had a right to choose its model for
educating its children. "In our case, it is not a law," but
rather "a strategy to continue building socialism," he argued.

Besides the interview with Gomez, Granma ran, in October, an
extensive and unusual series titled 'Scholarships under debate'.

However, an article published in the Catholic magazine 'Vitral'
on the autonomy of education defended the right of families and
students to choose between boarding and day schools.

"Parents shouldn't have to delegate authority over their
children's education to the school, nor should attending school
keep children from spending time with their parents," academic
Sergio Lazaro Cabarroy said in the 'Vitral' article.

There was controversy over the mandatory nature of the boarding
school system from the start, but it flared up this year when Pope
John Paul II stressed families' right to choose the type of
education they want for their children.

The Pope's call was more than just a demand for the opening of
Catholic schools. It was an implicit criticism of a system which,
according to the Catholic Church, separates families and causes
essential human values to be lost.

Except on rare exceptions - in cases of illness or in certain
regions excluded from the system for unknown reasons - the so-
called 'rural schools' are the only choice for students in the
three pre-university years.

The system, which came into effect 27 years ago as an
alternative to the urban pre-university system, was well received
by poor families and students with high academic grades, who chose
the best boarding schools.

But in the 1990-1991 school year, the government announced that
all students who passed into the 10th grade had to go to rural
schools, so as to fulfil the goal of linking school to work. Until
then, secondary and senior-high students took their classes near
their homes and were mobilized once a year for 45 days to do
agricultural work.

"I can't explain how schools will be able to create habits of
organization in students if the majority of the dorms lack even a
closet where they can store their belongings," said Olga
Rodriguez, a graduate of a rural pre-university college.

Parents complain about the poor material conditions and
deterioration of some schools, the poor food, sexual freedom and
in some cases, inadequate supervision of students by their
teachers.

Under school regulations, according to Granma, students have to
be courteous, respect one another and their teachers, refrain from
"physical aggression and offensive name-calling and pranks" and
"display responsible sexual conduct".

"Beds must be used individually. More than one student
sleeping in each bed is prohibited," the regulations add in
reference to a practice that has alarmed many parents in Cuba.

Gomez says measures are being taken to improve the system so
that it can respond better to the needs of a country that "has
universalized education, and which must universalize work".
Since it came to power in 1959, the government has wiped out
illiteracy and made education free at all levels.

The Ministry of Education reported in September that some 2.4
million children - about a fifth of Cuba's 11 million people -were
in school in the 1998-1999 academic year.

Official arguments in favour of the rural boarding schools
include better results such as the increasing number of students
have been taking university entrance exams.

Gomez said the students must be heard and people must not draw
conclusions only from listening to the adults who at one point had
supported the direction of the Cuban Revolution but "now manifest
certain paternalistic attitudes".

At the end of the last decade, experts here warned that the
Cuban family was being affected by stdents' prolonged absences
from home, which have changed the family dynamics on the island,
negative affected children's education and undermined the
stability of couples.

For Patricia Ares, lecturer in psychology at the University of
Havana, you cannot speak of the family's social importance and
then routinely separate youngsters from parents when the latter
need to play an educative role

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